Circular Cuts

Instead of talking about the rage-inducing discussions about the Confederate Flag on the internet in which there are already enough people participating and I'd just be lost as extra noise, I'm going to talk about fencing.

I really need to work on my circular cuts. For those who don't know, a circular cut is a type of cut centered on the wrist, which involves your blade moving in a full circular disc around your hand. It's really easy to generate a lot of force quickly with a properly-executed circular cut. In the Italian tradition, they are sometimes referred to as a "moulinet". In the Spanish tradition, the "tajo" and "reves" are types of circular cut.

In the type of fencing I do, a circular cut can be a super effective way to escape really bad positions. Unfortunately, it's hard to turn that circular cut into a thrust or cut that isn't too hard. So I need to work on my circular cuts, and my positioning with them such that I have the extra time needed to slow them down at the end of the motion.

Maybe striking specifically at the blade would be a good use for a circular cut, as well. Hmm.

Things to work on for next practice:

• Positioning with moulinets
• Engaging and disengaging from "I will only act in ways which assure me victory" mode

Anyone have any suggestions for executing moulinets properly in SCA rapier?

Touch, Small Angle, Large Angle, Renegotiate

In whatever blend of Spanish and Italian fencing I use, there is a very definite flow to fights. In strict Italian forms it is very different and speaks in far more specific terms having to do with thrusting distance at a lunge, and thrusting distance at a lean. In strict Spanish forms, distance has more to do with where you can cut a person, because let's be honest - that feels super satisfying. As well, the approaching blade in a cut can parry.

My own style of combat has its own flow, which I will recount for you today. It is based on what action is necessary for defense. This entry is partially me sorting out whats and whys of my style, so please do bear with me.

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Zone of Contact - The area between 1/2 and 3/4 of the way down the blade, closer to the tip than to the hilt. This is the area in which you can perform productive pushes and force their blade to give. This is also deep enough that a disengage is an action at Small Angle range, and difficult at best in Large Angle range.

Strong of the Blade - For our purposes here, this is just defined as the first half of your blade. It's the part that you can do relatively sure parries with.

Angle - The exact numbers for angles here are a bit fuzzy. Mostly, where I say "45˚ angle", that's really just an angle between 0˚ and 90˚ that I haven't gathered experimental data for. It's probably something like 45˚ in reality, but it could be slightly different.

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Touch range is the range at which your blades touch. It's where you can first perform actions on your opponent's blade, assuming you are both fully extended. It continues to about where your tips can touch the center of each other's blades. Neither of you can touch each other in a single-tempo lunge, though if your opponent takes one step forward you might be able to single-tempo lunge to touch them. It's pretty cool.

The point of this distance is to flirt around with contact and gain advantages in the next range. An advantage is here defined as anything that lets you predict or close off options from your opponent. The most obvious option you need to remove is the single-tempo lunge. Everything else is just static that you try to use to mess with your opponent.

Small Angle is the range at which you can first make a small angle with your opponent's sword. This angle should be made somewhere on the Zone of Contact, probably with your sword's Zone of Contact as well. This range ends about where you can touch your hilt to halfway down your opponent's blade, if your arms were both extended.

This distance is the first point at which you or your opponent can make a single-tempo lunge (or other attack) and have a reasonable chance of touching your opponent, if they don't parry.

The point of this distance is to defend yourself while setting yourself up for the Large Angle. Pay keen attention in this range - if your opponent is distracted, this is the range at which you can move forward and cleanly defend yourself while touching your tip to your opponent. A strong play here is to make an angle between 0˚ and 45˚ with your opponent's blade, slowly moving forward.

Large Angle is the range at which it is possible to place your sword on the other person's sword at the Zone of Contact at a 90˚ angle, if both of your arms are extended. This range ends where your hilt is buried in their chest. This is also the range at which you should be able to first lean and stab your opponent with an extension and no foot movement.

You should ideally place a stronger part of your blade on their Zone of Contact at this point. Otherwise, you need to block every single place they can move their sword to touch you in one tempo with the Strong of your Blade, such that their blade will contact yours with their Zone of Contact.

If someone is not being stabbed here, then there is a problem. The point of this distance should be to use the angles and expectations that you have already set up to put their sword in a place where they can't hit you, but you can hit them. Generally at this range your options are very restricted. It is hard to gain a line if you don't already have one.

If you can, you should have contact with their blade at a 45˚ to 90˚ angle. If there is nowhere that you can use your sword to describe a line connecting the Zone of Contact to their body, then you should probably either retreat or renegotiate.

In case it wasn't obvious, the point of this distance is to stab your opponent.

Renegotiate is less of a distance and more of an action. It is something you can do in the Large Angle range to change their options such that you can injure them, but they cannot injure you. This includes hooking their sword with your cane, stabbing them with your dagger, or performing a tajo or reves.

The basic way of doing this is to establish a strong defense against their large angle, if they have one. Then, you perform some action that establishes a new line of threat.

If you push your hilt really hard against their sword and then thrust with the dagger, that establishes a defense (push) and an attack on a new line (dagger).

If you perform a tajo, you place your hilt in the way of their immediate attack (defense), then circle your blade around your head such that your blade goes from one side of their body to the other (attack on a new line).

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That is how the system works, at least for today. Some fighters ignore some of these steps, forcing the fight to remain in certain places. It works for them. But these are the steps which matter for me.

Derping Thursday

I did a bit of fencing on Thursday. This is better than the amount I had expected to do, which was none. This is just a quick "reporting on what happened and what I need to keep in mind for the future" post.

Reverse-foot, blade-extended posture doesn't really foot. In order to get the explosive passing step/lunge that I'm looking for, I really need to put my body's weight on my back foot, instead of my front foot. This allows me to kick off from the back foot, shift my weight to my front foot, then fall forward into a lunge with my previously-back foot. During that last shift of weight I can alter my approach by about 45 degrees - not a huge amount.

My shoulder has been hurting a bit when I angle it down into a Giganti-ish guard with a sword in it. It doesn't get more intense when I throw a thrust from a gunslinger type stance though, so I think that the tendon is just irritated. I bumped into a doorframe in about that place about a week and a half ago, and it has been bothering me since before last Monday, so it's probably a combination injury/overuse thing. I probably am also not using correct form. If I pull my scapulae tight,I load two shoulder tendons instead of one, so that might be a good plan.

Additionally, I've been experimenting with some gunslinger type stance stuff, because why not. That tends to load the tendon harder, and if I do a passing step then it loads the tendon even more. I'll try to rest it, take some ibuprofen, and tone down the amount I fence at practice for a bit. Maybe I'll try to teach? Who knows.

My intensity was pretty good, but could always be better.

I fought a bunch of people. One thing of note is that I didn't get very many chances to do straight-up push-through opposition from the outside. People kept defending themselves well, and also frequently responded well to the yield around. They also fought more defensively, so I should probably be hand-sniping more when that happens.

I totally blanked on how to fight against someone who is way taller than me. I forgot to do the good ol' destreza opposition-from-above thing. Ah well, life goes on.

For next practice, I should keep my already-known strategies better in mind. I should also think about what to do if someone is waiting to pick out their time to approach,

Things to Work on for Next Practice

The things I need to work on for next practice include:

• Put reverse-foot blade-extended posture into muscle memory.
• Are there any times in which standard foot posture is better?
• Think about what other stances I need to practice, and what situations they are useful for.
• A-frame reverse-foot stance is nice for when I need to mess with measure and suppress a sword on their left side.
• What characteristics do various stances have?
• Maintain maximum intensity in first and last three fights.

That's it. Keep doing what I'm doing aside from that, and I should be good.

The Results of Last Entry

Today, I am just posting to confirm that I tried a couple of things inspired by yesterday's entry and they worked.

I practiced diving in and forcing a scrum against one of my opponents who historically gives me trouble. It worked, but probably mainly because it was unexpected. There are many different ways to take someone's blade with your sword, and eventually I started performing a yield but instead of striking to the center, pushing outwards or downwards with my hilt. It worked decently well, and is something to possibly incorporate into my game against buckler people.

Additionally, I started using passing step-lunges. The full action is kind of slow, but it covers quite a bit of ground to touch people when they think they are safe. The exact action starts in a standard fencing stance, but with feet reversed. Perform a passing step, but instead of landing in a square stance, land in a lunge step. It doesn't have to be a large lunge - just a lunge. It approaches like a straight-on lunge, so the defensive blade-work remains the same. I combined it with a sort of leaning-back A-frame sword and dagger posture, to hide my true measure even more.

Lastly, I practiced a dagger-forward posture. This is to make my parrying more effective when my opponent refuses good blade contact. That A-frame pose was one example - it seemed like it would be effective against case users who refuse blade contact. The dagger goes stretched toward the most obvious line, to make it so they have to perform a larger movement get around my parry, than if I kept my dagger back in its usual home next to my right wrist.

This might be a theme for a while - thinking of how they are denying my defensive options and how they are denying my offensive options, and what I can do to overcome this denial. And of course, the exact function of each type of positioning.

Countering the Way I Fence OR How I Learned to Love Bulleted Lists

Last week I nearly posted had a half-baked blog post about four situations that give me particular trouble. In the process of writing that post, I realized that all four of those situations do a similar thing in different ways. They deny me safe entry into the center line.

In order to describe how this happens, I need to describe my ideal fight flowchart.

• My sword goes on the outside line.
• If their sword is particularly far to their right, I perform a yield and thrust to the center line.
• If their sword is not, I take their sword and fold it across their body, thrusting in prima-seconda into the center line.
• If I cannot take the outside line, I disengage around, circle, and try to look threatening until my opponent gives me the center line.

There are obviously things that happen outside of this. But this is the safe game, and I know that if I do this, I will generally not lose, even though I might not win.

There are many opponents who do or have done things which push me out of this game.

• Two-layered sweeping defensive parries with short blade.
• Offline sword prevents blade contact.
• Sweeping parries prevent first and second intent of shot. Closing distance prevents the third.
• With longer sword, sweeping dagger could pick up first and then closing distance/throwing shot prevents the second.
• Wrist cocked at an odd angle such that their blade is already folded in the opposite way across their body.
• Can't fire prima-seconda shot because attempting to get good opposition slides my tip to their strong.
• Can't yield around because their hilt is too far to their left.
• Buckler and long, semi-offline sword.
• Buckler closes center line.
• Sword being offline prevents good blade contact.
• Offline sword and leaned back guard.
• Sword being offline prevents good blade contact.
• Leaning back and usage of distance prevents full-intent center-line shot.
• Wide, completely-offline, longer-ranged case game.
• Usage of distance and greater range prevents full-intent center-line shot.
• Swords being offline prevent good blade contact.
• Wide, one-sword-online long-ranged case game.
• Good blade contact possible with one sword.
• Second sword comes in for the kill through center line, maybe parrying.
• Double-kill-stravaganza.

All of these different classes of opponents, and all of these similar themes. Instead of spitballing solutions to particular opponents, I should spitball solutions to particular issues. With that in mind, I can establish an ongoing framework for improvement and things to try.

• Things which suppress my defensive capability.
• Sword far down enough that I can't touch it.
• Point sword at their hilt. Fire at their forearm with right-circling footwork to remove my target area.
• Maybe shots with arm pointed to the left but wrist sharply to the right, to place my hilt in the way of their sword but still go for the body?
• Lean in with dagger, to the point that they cannot fire a single-tempo attack.
• Lean in with sword, crossing the planes of their most likely ingress. Perform a large lunge, blocking them out to the outside after they execute their attack, since their attack will by necessity be multi-tempo.
• Dive in with a wide outside parry and force the scrum.
• Sword pointing to my left enough that I can't acquire and maintain good opposition.
• Disengage and play on the inside (ugh).
• Attack to the forearm on the outside.
• Things which suppress my offensive capability.
• Sweeping parries.
• Attack to non-protected areas (feet/legs).
• Twitch sword up past their tip to avoid the sweep, then descend in prima. Down if they are tall, and rise in terza.
• Usage of distance.
• Deceive distance.
• Post the sword.
• Weird lunges.
• Cross leg behind before lunge.
• Passing step / lunge.
• Force them to move, attack when they move forward.
• Patience.
• Dive in with a wide outside parry and force the scrum.
• Usage of off-hand implement.
• Take their arm.
• Find ways to turn their implement into a disadvantage.
• This category deserves a very long entry all to itself.
• Dive in with a wide outside parry and force the scrum.

"Dive in and force the scrum" seems to be an acceptable solution to enough of these that I really should add it to my game. So, I guess that at practice tonight I'll be practicing my dagger dives.

Practice Last Night

I was decently lazy last practice, and that's acceptable but not ideal. I got there relatively late, because traffic and 15 minutes of dinner on the way there. Nutrition is important.

For the first part of practice, I was grabbed to talk through Plate 31 of Fabris. Long version short, it's essentially the same as the thing I have been calling "yielding around the blade", though Fabris says you should do it in a couple of different places from where I usually perform the action. This is because Fabris loathes direct blade interaction.

Usually when I perform a yield, it's because I'm pushing on their blade with the false edge of my blade in an attempt to try to force them into blade contact on the outside. Then they resist, and then I yield around.

Then there was general playing-around time. It was good, but I wasn't really working on anything in particular, and I'm feeling that after-the-fact. Usually I will pick a thing to work on during practice, even if it's something wibbly and nonspecific like "tighten my form". I didn't really fight *that* much, and my head was elsewhere while I was fighting. I really needed to do more pickups.

Then the tournament happened. I didn't put on my game-face this time, partly because I was in a good mood and partly because I wanted to see how it would go. I lost to my don and then to the good doctor, surprising literally nobody. Both of those losses were because I under-committed from the place I lunged, and then botched the parry with my dagger. I think I really need to trust my ability to take a fully-committed step or two while parrying, then perform a lunge.

Also maybe I need to start fighting from a stance that holds itself just inside of the good doctor's stance. So, my right hand points just inside of his left hand, perhaps with blade contact and pushing him outwards to prevent easy foot-shots. Then my left hand decouples from my right wrist and sort of floats up high, just inside of his right hand sword. That is something to try for next Monday practice.

So, things I could work on for Thursday:

• If I fight against someone with case, my dagger goes just inside of whatever sword my sword is not covering.
• Tighten form in order to die less. Form can always be tightened. Motions can always be made more economical.
• Work on destreza-type wrist-cut-disengages. In particular when my opponent takes my sword from the inside, use a full circular cut to get out of it safely.
• Think about my game on the inside line. I still prefer the outside line far, far more. But I'm not sure if the correct move is to always fence from the outside line. The inside line is just so very dangerous.

And for Monday:

• If I fight against someone with case, my dagger goes just inside of whatever sword my sword is not covering. Pickups with the doctor in order to work on this.
• Don't participate in the tournament. Tournament takes a while and one every week isn't useful to me. Every other week is good. Maybe bring a new fencer downstairs and teach a short class or something?

That last point reminds me. I also spent some time teaching the basics of my outside line game to one of our newer fencers. It was surprisingly fun, actually. I might do more teaching in the future, if people want to learn from me.